Success, he saw, would require more than mere talent. It would require him to depend on others, crawl out of his shell, sully himself in intangible, immaterial fraternizing. But his shame and resentment had made him unreachable, had made him alien, and he’d clung to them stubbornly, self-lovingly, all the same. He’d believed them to be his greatest asset, his greatest motivator, his greatest fuel. But his greatest asset was beginning to look like his greatest liability. His self-love was beginning to look like self-defeat. Yet to recognize this was not the same as to rectify it. He feared the
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